


Metal and Sparks

by TheseusInTheMaze



Category: That Guy with the Glasses/Channel Awesome
Genre: Gen, Unicorns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-10
Updated: 2011-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-17 21:32:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/181354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheseusInTheMaze/pseuds/TheseusInTheMaze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time - no, wait, that doesn't work. Once, there was a unicorn, and a girl with birds on her skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Metal and Sparks

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fiction. All characters mentioned therein belong to their original owners. I will not be making any money off of this. Please don't sue me.
> 
> I honestly have no idea where this came from, but I'm quite proud of it.

Once upon a time – no, wait. That isn’t it. “Once upon a time” implies that it was a different time, and that doesn’t work, now does it? All time is the same time, or else _all_ time is “once upon a time”, and that would never be right.

So. Let us try again. There was a place, and it was a good place. There was water there, and life, and because it was a good place, a unicorn came. What do I mean, because? All good places have unicorns. Just because you haven’t seen a unicorn around your good places doesn’t mean it isn’t there! Unicorns are drawn to those that dream them. You just haven’t yet.

Where was I? Oh. Yes. The good place. Now, as happens to all good places, people came. Some of them were good people, some of them were bad people, and some of them were unicorn dreamers. The good place changed (as all places do, good and otherwise), and it became less of a good place, more a place of death and fear, albeit fear unhearable to the people, not really (that is, the two legged people).

The unicorn probably should have left – found another good place, a better one. Unicorns can do that, you know. Have you ever gone somewhere and found it stale, flat, somehow less than it was, even if you hadn’t ever seen it before? That is a place where a unicorn was and is no more. For whatever reason, the unicorn stayed; its coat grew grey like old ashes, its horn leaking blood. Unicorns can do that sometimes; they change to better fit their places (although this is not always good for the unicorn). The dreamers who saw it sought to fix it, to heal the wrongness (and there is an amusing irony to that, of a human being healing a unicorn; perhaps they were the reason it stayed), even if they only remembered it in the corners of their dreams. Unicorns work like that sometimes; they stay in the shadows and change the world.

Slowly, it turned back into a good place. Not the good place it once was, because no place can return to its former self, but still a good place. As is the way of unicorns, it changed again as the place changed around it, and that was how it found the girl with birds on her skin.

It was late in the winter, which isn’t the best time to be wandering around, especially in the middle of the night. But it was the first snowfall, and that calls to a certain type of person. A unicorn dreaming kind of person. Pushing Up Roses was wandering around and around her block, wrapped in a warm coat and her own thoughts as the snow fell like so many feathers to gather in her hair, melting with the warmth of her skin.

She saw the unicorn under the streetlight, but dismissed it, because one sees plenty of things when wandering the planes of the mind, and it is not unknown for them to bleed into the real world before fading away like water in the desert.

But the unicorn didn’t fade. It began to follow her, its hooves clanging on the sidewalk. That _did_ catch Roses’ attentions, because we rarely hear our thoughts outside of our own head. She stared at it, squinting through the snowflakes smudging her glasses. The unicorn walked under a streetlamp, and Roses gaped.

“You’re not real,” she told it firmly, and turned the corner towards her house.

The unicorn whinnied in what sounded like agreement.

“I’ve been up too late and I’m seeing things in the snow.” She looked over her shoulder, and the unicorn was still there. She began to walk faster, and the clang-bang of the unicorn’s hooves followed her.

She unlocked the door to her house, still glancing over her shoulder now and again. The unicorn stood there, looking at her calmly. She walked into her house, closed the door, and turned on the light. Then she looked out the window.

The light from the windows sank into the snow like honey, catching the rainbow oil sheen across the unicorn’s back.

Roses finally gave in to her curiosity (and all the many other feelings that unicorns inspire). She turned her porch light on, wiped the lenses of her glasses off on her scarf, and opened the door.

The unicorn chuffed at her, one of its ears flickering towards her. It was so big that it could only fit its front legs on the porch.

“Why are you following me?” Roses felt silly talking to a unicorn, but really, who wouldn’t?

The unicorn was made of metal. At least, that was what it looked like. There were hinges at each of its joints, tiny, intricate things. Its body was made of some kind of thin, grey, metal, stretched across its frame (its bones?) like a car. She could hear, very faintly, a susurrus of ticks and clicks from inside of it. Its eyes were lenses, metal slots that narrowed or widened as needed. Its mane and tail were made of what looked like thin metal wire, gold or copper. Its big hooves were made from some other kind of metal, thick and strong and heavy. Its horn was a greasy, shiny metal, shining faintly in the light. It was a ridiculous thing, a thing out of a comic book.

And yet. And yet.

For all the clockwork and metal, it was alive. How this was obvious I cannot tell you, any more than I can tell you the scent of rain or the taste of music. Oh, there were the “obvious signs” (which can be faked, to a certain degree); its body parts moved together smoothly, the way only a living thing can. Breath steamed out of its nostrils (not smoke or steam, but the sweet breath of a unicorn). The glow of its eyes was real, the color at the very center of a candle flame or a spark from a cut wire.

Unicorns change when the world around them changes. It grew bigger as the city around it changed, and the ash color of its coat brightened, went metallic and hard. Its horn no longer bled blood, but shone with the blue light of electricity that sang through the veins of the world. Because the world was now a place of metal and sparks, the unicorn changed to reflect that. That is the way of unicorns.

Pushing Up Roses stared at the unicorn, and felt a sob catch in her throat. Some feeling she couldn’t name and didn’t want to welled up inside of her. Hesitantly, she held one mittened hand out to the unicorn, fingers flat, the way she had been taught to feed a horse.

The unicorn chuffed at her again and blew warm air across them. It shook its body to settle its skin (with nary a rattle, further proof it was, indeed, alive) and nosed at her arm.

“Why are you here?” Roses stepped closer, putting her hand on the unicorn’s nose. She could feel the heat of its skin through her mitten, a breathing, muted heat.

The unicorn smelled like lightning on the lake, and something else, something like your favorite color (and you’re probably thinking that color doesn’t have a scent and I’m speaking utter nonsense, but just because it’s nonsense doesn’t mean it isn’t _true_ ).

“Are you real?” Roses was whispering now. She pushed the tops of her mittens down, baring the tips of her fingers to the frigid air. Nervously, hesitantly, she reached out and stroked down the unicorn’s nose.

Its skin crackled the way a cat’s fur crackles when you pet it on a dry winter day. Blue sparks followed Roses’ fingers, and the unicorn whickered at her, blinking calmly (although how it was obvious that it was blinking is impossible to explain).

Roses pulled the glove off, stuffing it in her pocket. She lay her hand flat on the unicorn’s neck, a few pieces of wire thin and tight against her palm. The blue sparks didn’t hurt, didn’t really feel like anything. She sighed, taking a step closer, and pressed her forehead against the unicorn’s nose. The unicorn put its head down, until the horn was resting on Roses’ shoulder. There were more blue sparks, flowing from the unicorn, sparking across the bridge of Roses’ glasses, across her eyebrows, through her eyelashes, across the thin hair at her temples.

Who knows how long they stayed like that? Unicorns are creatures that are real and unreal simultaneously, so why should time matter to them? But time did pass, the right amount of time, and it was time to part.

The unicorn whickered at Roses when she stood up straight, lipping her shoulder through her coat.

Roses was crying, although she didn’t know why. The feeling prickling on the sides of her eyes and the back of her neck doesn’t have a name, which is a pity, as we have so many names for useless things.

The unicorn flicked its ear at her, nuzzling the side of her neck, careful of the long horn. It took its massive metal hooves off of Roses’ porch, then turned around, its coppery-gold tail swishing the snow off, and walked into the night, hooves clanged and gears whispering.

Roses stepped inside and closed her door carefully, tears still dripping from the corners of her eyes. Her bare hand was tingling, itching to wrap around a pencil and create something. The same tingle was starting in her mind, fizzing and popping, whistling through her ideas. She wiped her eyes on the back of her hand and kicked her boots off, dreams boiling out of her head like the steam from a unicorn’s mouth.

Later – much later, after she had drawn until her fingers cramped – she lay in bed, her eyes closed, and felt the deep, safe comfort in the knowledge that somewhere in the city, a unicorn was walking, striking sparks on the pavement.


End file.
